Chaos at Bengaluru airport: Large crowd, handwritten tickets, manual check-ins after global Microsoft outage

NEW DELHI: The global Microsoft cloud services outage on Friday caused significant inconvenience for passengers at Bengaluru airport, leading to long lines at the check-in counters of all major airlines as their systems were unable to process check-ins.

Indigo, Air India Express, SpiceJet, and Akasa at Bengaluru airport started checking in passengers manually on after a the outage disrupted the Navitaire Departure Control System.
This issue caused significant delays and inconvenience for passengers at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA).
The global outage began at 10:40 IST on July 19, 2024 and has been affecting operations of several airlines, including those at BLR Airport. The Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) issued a statement addressing the situation.

"A global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System (NDCS) has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network, including BLR Airport since 10.40 IST on July 19, 2024," said a BIAL spokesperson.
The disruptions extended to the Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) and Common Use Self Service (CUSS) systems, exacerbating the situation.
Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet in Terminal-1 and Air India Express in Terminal-2 were among the affected airlines.
"In response to this situation, Indigo, Air India Express, SpiceJet, and Akasa have taken proactive measures by initiating manual check-ins to ensure minimal disruption to passengers and flight schedules," the spokesperson added.
As a result, the lounge at KIA became overcrowded with passengers anxiously waiting for their delayed flights. The manual check-in process, involving handwritten boarding passes, aimed to mitigate the impact on travel schedules.
Despite the challenges, the airlines' swift response in implementing manual check-ins sought to reduce inconvenience for travelers, ensuring that flight operations could continue with some level of normalcy amidst the technical difficulties.
Chaotic scenes unfolded at airports nationwide on Friday as a global computer outage caused numerous flight delays and cancellations.
The widespread IT disruption, one of the largest ever, stemmed from an update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, affecting Microsoft's Windows and impacting operations across airlines, banks, brokerages, hospitals and even television channels.
A potentially historic IT outage began due to a faulty sensor configuration update for Microsoft Windows systems.
The issue started when a CrowdStrike software update triggered a logic error, resulting in widespread system crashes and the infamous 'blue screen ' on many affected devices.